Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants milfoil/coontail mix - chemical suggestions?

any suggestions on the most cost effective way to kill a mix of milfoil and coontail in fairly shallow water?

Blake Like you I'm new to this site but not new period. I'm 54 and have been in around or on the water all my life. You have named two of the toughest plants known to man to eradicate. In my experience there is only one SUREFIRE way to do it.
#1 Stop shaving NOW!!
#2 Place a complete change of clothes in a trash bag along with 7 Vidalia onions, 2 Navel oranges, an unopened pack of Marlboro Lights(softpack only) and a pint of Smirnoff. Seal the bag tight and cram it under the seat of your truck.
# 2-a In the next day or two find an old tracter tire and place it 18 ft from where the coontail or the milfoil is worst. Then at night when everybody is asleep go out there and pee in it, repeat this EVERY night until 2/18.
#3 Wait until Friday 2/18 (full moon) then retrieve the bag, put on the clothes, flush the cigs down the toilet and pour the Smirnoff over your head making sure it runs down into and through the beard that you should have going by now (#1)
#4 OK... Heres where it gets good!!! At 11:45 take black sharpie marker and draw big circles around both your eyes all the way from eyebrowss to cheekbone! By then it should be almost midnight. At 12:01 am set the tire on fire and wait till it gets a good burn going. Then throw your hands in the air like you just don't care raise your right leg up and start hopping around the fire counterclockwise while shouting DIEYA! DIEYA real loud. Make 3 complete revolutions in this manner and then quickly turn around raise your left leg and make 3 clockwise rotations shouting even LOUDER!!! Oh by the way if you own a handgun it is advised that you should be firing it straight over your head during the clockwise rotation only! (if you don't have one simply do the second rotation with your left leg out of your pants while dragging the pants around with your right ankle).
#5 After you have finished hopping around get the onions and oranges (don't forget to continue shouting really loud) and throw them at the milfoil beds and the coontails real hard.
#6 Finally take off all your clothes reload the pistol and sit by the fire and empty as many rounds as you have into the tire and shout SERENITY NOW after each and every shot!!!
#7 The next morning when your wife bails you out of jail or gets you sprung from the nearest mental health facility go home and take a good close look at the milfoil and coontails and you will realize they are the LEAST of your problems!!!!
Good Luck and Welcome th the site:0

Blake:

These were recommended to me : Renovate OTF (granular), Renovate 3 (liquid), Navigate (granular) for my pond. I saw 2-3 plants last Spring, and by the Fall they turned into close to 50 plants. I hand pulled most of them, and treated the areas that they were a month later with Renovate OTF. I will be on the lookout for any stragglers this year. I've heard of Diquat being recommended, but when I tried it 2x, it only gave them a haircut and they grew back.

I was also told that milfoil (dunno about coontail) was very susceptible to fluridone (Sonar/Whitecap), but that's not an inexpensive treatment.

man, you need to send me some of that shine you make!

navigate granular looks to be the least expensive chemical, right or wrong?

I hear you on that one!

Blake Greg Grimes a respected lake and fisheries professional that posts a lot on here recommends it. So I'd have to say right. However if for whatever reason you don't get the results your looking for....I still highly recommend the above referenced option...VERY EFFECTIVE...as a side note you can also use this same procedure to lessen whatever concerns you have about not just weeds but anything really...global warming...anchor babies...Rush Limbaugh...gun control...earmarks...Jullian Assange...ANYTHING REALLY!!!!!!

i've never used navigate before. if i was to use it to cut boat lanes, applied in the correct dosage at the right time, about how long would it keep the lanes open?

Here's what I was told when I inquired about spot treating milfoil in my pond:
"spot-treatments" with systemic herbicides is a inexact science. Diffusion from targeted "spots" is much more dramatic as the size of the treated-spot decreases. So, contact-time is always in question in spot-treatment scenarios.
If you feel inclined to treat now, I would lean toward RENOVATE OTF, and possibly conduct a split-treatment; one day after another. But, that would all depend on how static the water-column is on the initial day of treatment.
48-hrs of contact-time, at a lethal/labeled concentration, is the optimum scenario. If such can be accomplished with one dosing, then so be it.

With that said, the neighbor at the lake house (which is on a 365 ac lake) treated in front of their house (50' wide by 150 foot long) with a slow release tableted form of Fluridone. Sonar something or other. The milfoil stayed away from their place for 3 years. But, and this is a big BUT, I don't know how much she used - she said it was expensive. They haven't re-treated it again, and the milfoil is back to being a yearly problem. There is a company that treats portions of the lake. Whatever they use, is good on milfoil from late May thru about the 3rd week of August.

Hey esshup, this sounds strangely familiar!!
BTW - I spoke with Blake earlier this morning. Coincidentally, I'm very familiar with the lake-system in question, and even toured them both this past Monday. Back in the '90s, Eurasian water milfoil was the primary, if not the solitary pest-specie. Initially, whole-lake fluridone treatments performed well. However, levee-lakes such as this (especially a pair that are conjoined) are inherently prone to vegetation issues of one type or another due to their large interiors of clear/shallow water. In short, this lake's non-native EWM has now become a relatively minor problem behind coontail and chara. If I had the option, I'd rather battle only the EWM (much easier to manage IMO). Needless to say, Mother Nature is very tenacious when the opportunity exists to fill a void.
Due to the size and design of this lake-system, the likely plan this season is to periodically spot-treat boat lanes and interior fishing corridors with a combination of contact-herbicides. This approach should produce acceptable boat-access and fishing opportunities without decimating the lake's plant-population (which was bad for fishing) or breaking the bank-account (definitely bad for the POA). However, it should be noted that a different approach might be more appropriate for managing conventional lakes (versus levee-lakes).

Kelly, I wondered if you'd recognize it.

2,4-d did the trick for me last year for EWM (I really didn't want to drop $1600 for the gallon of Sonar it would have taken to treat the whole pond). Treated at 2ppm and in 3 weeks it was flat,black, and decaying. Had a few plants reappear late in the season, but I plan on treating again this year when the water hits about 65 degrees. I may not get a complete kill, but it sure knocked the pants off of what was a 75% infestation! Good luck with whatever you try!

I don't believe 2,4-d is labeled for pond use.......

Several brands of liquid 2,4-D amines are labeled for floating and shoreline aquatic weeds. However, all but two labels (brands) strictly limit the products' use for submerged species (specifically Eurasian watermilfoil) to waters under the control of TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority). This was a "political concession" secured by the TVA many years ago.
A granular form of 2,4-D (NAVIGATE) is also labeled for subsurface aquatic weeds - although it impacts a somewhat limited number of submerged aquatic weed-species (of which milfoil is one).
Due to the potential of off-target damage and drift, several states heavily regulate access to and the use of 2,4-D products. In Texas, and many other cotton-producing states, 2,4-D is a "state limited-use pesticide" (requires an applicators license to buy/apply if the formulated product-container exceeds 1-qt).